For small business owners, independent entrepreneurs and corporate leadership alike, maintaining a blog is an effective way to be regarded as a thought leader and expert in your field. Plus, it’s no secret that frequently updating a blog that exists as a sub-domain of a business website is a great opportunity for search engine optimization. Now, even though “blogging” entered our collective vocabulary over a decade ago, there are still a number of myths that surround the pseudoscience of blogology. Let’s take a second to debunk a few:
- Myth: Quantity Beats Quality – If the goal is for your blog to be read by actual human people, it is far more critical to produce quality content than to post drivel daily. Always maintain the highest standards of subject matter and grammar, and use a tone that speaks to your audience.
- Myth: 300 Words or Less – Studies have shown that our fickle internet attention spans aren’t what they used to be back in the newspaper years. However, there’s no need to limit yourself to 300 words or less, especially if it means sacrificing the quality of your post. If what you have to say is valuable, authentic and well-written, use as many words as necessary.
- Myth: Save Time, Outsource – For CEOs, business owners or technical experts who write to an audience of knowledgeable readers, your reputation is on the line. If you turn to someone either within your organization or elsewhere to ghostwrite under your signature, any misinformation or subtle mistakes will be attributed to you. There’s no taking it back with a “wait, I didn’t say that.”
- Myth: My Blog will Make Money – While it is possible to host ads that can bring in revenue, it would be necessary to have an enormous follower base in order for each click’s fraction of a cent to amount to any significant income. Fortunately, there’s always the lottery.
- Myth: Words Beat Images – The old adage about “1000 words” is definitely still true with images in blogs. High quality images grab readers attention, they communicate critical details, and by manually entering caption and metadata into your CMS when you upload images, you also earn added SEO points as well. It’s like the old timers say: “one jpeg is worth 10GB of text.”
Even today, as mobile devices and social media continue to shape and reshape the digital content space, the blog is as relevant as ever. Ultimately, your blog is your voice – so speak up! Here at The Borenstein Group, we eat blogging for breakfast. If you’d like to talk more about this and other digital strategies, we’d love to hear from you. Please give us a call at 866-703-8178, or visit our Contact Us page.